"A million isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion."
This is one of the more famous lines (albeit paraphrased) from the Facebook movie The Social Network, and I think Twitter co-founder Evan Williams must be a fan of it based on his recent comments.
When asked whether or not Twitter could hit a billion users, Williams did not hesitate in affirming that it would. And while he didn't give a timetable for this goal, there's still the question everyone is now asking: Can Twitter hit one billion users?
Let's look at where Twitter's at right now. In June, Twitter COO Dick Costolo reported they had 190 million users. That's a solid number already and it continues to grow, but it seems rather bold to predict a billion users when you're less than a fifth of the way there. Mark Zuckerberg didn't even say Facebook would hit a billion users until it had already crossed the 500 million mark.
The other factor revolves around user retention. There was a recent infographic making its way around the Twittersphere, and there was one point specifically that was garnering a lot of attention. According to the infographic, only 3% of users have more than 100 followers. This is a problem because Twitter's success comes from higher levels of involvement, and low follower counts are often a sign that the engagement is lacking.
This illustrates the over-arcing obstacle Twitter faces in hitting their billion-user goal; Twitter is hard to get into. Sure, making an account and following a bunch of friends or celebrities is easy enough, but getting the most out of the service requires much deeper levels of engagement.
But there is hope. Twitter continues to grow with a very successful new redesign and increased ubiquity in our online culture. And if more users can get past that steeper learning curve and really become more involved with it, it's hard to doubt Twitter's potential to one day answer this billion-dollar question.
